Three-Day Weekends, Longer Seconds & 100-Day Christmas: Welcome to Decimal Time
Ever looked at a clock and thought, “Why is this so messy? ”Twelve hours. Sixty minutes. Sixty seconds. But what if we started again? What if we threw the whole thing in the bin.
A little thought experiment to break your brain (and possibly society)
Ever looked at a clock and thought, “Why is this so messy?”
Twelve hours. Sixty minutes. Sixty seconds.
It’s like we let a committee of medieval monks and Babylonian mathematicians cobble it together — because, well, we did.
But what if we started again?
What if we threw the whole thing in the bin and built something tidier? Cleaner. Decimal.
Ten-hour days. 100-minute hours. 100-second minutes.
Ten-day weeks. 20-day months.
A neat 10-month year.
Sounds ridiculous, right? But let’s roll with it…
The case for burning the clock
The way we measure time has always been a total fudge.
The Egyptians gave us 12-hour days because they liked the number 12. The Babylonians loved base-60, so we got 60 minutes in an hour. The Romans bolted on months like leftover Lego bricks. And we’ve been bumbling along ever since.
It’s worth remembering that time isn’t real.
It’s a concept we invented to stop us being late to meetings.
And the thing about inventions? You can reinvent them.
The upside of decimal time
There are some obvious perks:
✅ Easy maths.
No more 7×24 mental gymnastics when planning your week.
Everything’s base 10 — you’d learn to tell time at nursery school.
✅ Universal consistency.
Your clock, your calendar, your watch, your Fitbit — all working on the same system.
✅ Fewer weekends, but more holidays.
With ten-day weeks, a three-day weekend becomes the norm.
We could invent whole new bank holidays. Toffee Apple Day. National Lie-In Day. Premier League Panic Buying Day.
✅ A longer Christmas season.
In this brave new world, there’d be about 100 days between “start putting your tree up” and actual Christmas Day.
The tree would be bald and dry by then — a gift to hoover manufacturers everywhere.
The downside (or, why this would be an absolute disaster)
Of course, it wouldn’t all be mince pies and decimal dreams:
⚽️ Football fixture chaos.
Try cramming 38 league matches into a ten-day week system.
VAR would probably still find a way to mess it up.
🏌️♂️ Golf? Forget it.
No time to squeeze in 18 holes.
Golfers everywhere would riot. Or at least draft a strongly-worded letter.
📆 Society would implode.
Think about it. Every app, diary, timetable, birthday, financial quarter, school holiday — all designed around our weird, clunky time system.
Changing it would make the Y2K bug look like a paper jam.
But here’s the thing…
The point isn’t really about decimal time.
It’s about how many of the things we think are “just the way it is” are, in fact, made up.
Calendars. Work weeks. Meeting times. Deadlines.
All human inventions.
We could change any of them, if we wanted to.
We probably won’t — because the admin would be horrific — but we could.
And when you realise that, you start to spot other things you’ve accepted without question. Other systems, routines, expectations you could tweak, bend, or redesign.
No decimal clock required.
One big idea, two recommendations, three actions
One Big Idea:
Time is a human construct. So are many of the rules we live by.
Two Recommendations:
Next time you feel trapped by your calendar, remember: it’s all made up.
If you fancy a real rabbit hole, read about the French Revolutionary Calendar. It lasted 12 years and was an absolute shambles.
Three Actions:
Look at one routine in your week you’ve always just accepted — and ask if it’s actually serving you.
Try explaining decimal time to your kids and watch their brains melt.
Send this post to a mate who’s always moaning there aren’t enough hours in the day.
What would you change if you could rewrite time?
Hit the comments below let me know.
Interesting ways of conceptualization. Indiana study of our time measurements as well and it's a mess. Maybe this is better. It would be interesting to play with a concept like this in a novel.